POPEYE & ME (by Max)

When I was in in the 5th grade, I was a shaggy-haired 10-year-old living in a crappy, crime-riddled Canoga Park apartment complex with my single mother, a hard-working RN who was hardly ever home.

Man, I was one of the ORIGINAL "latch key kids". I would come home after school to an empty dwelling and the only way I could get through the front door was with a single, copper key that was literally tied to a shoelace I would wear around my neck. It was pretty sad, looking back now. Especially now that I've heard how much better others were raised. No, me, I was a perpetually broke, lonely boy who - while he had some friends, sure - spent MOST of his time living in fantasy settings amongst fictional characters. Safe to say the most pivotal of those characters at that time was the greatest creation of all from the cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar... that of the eternally grizzled Popeye, The Sailor Man.

(Click pics to enlarge)


Local KTLA, channel 5, would air TWO FULL HOURS of old Popeye cartoons every Sunday morning hosted by "Skipper" Tom Hatten. Tom would dress like a longshoreman and introduce each of the cartoons with a little anecdote. Also, you could snail mail Tom a hand-drawn "squiggle" of your own imagination's doing and he would somehow turn it into something tangible at his drawing board (Hatten, too, was a cartoonist). I would watch that show religiously because the black-and-white Popeye shorts, especially, cast such a crazy spell on me that I couldn't concentrate on my school work. I would instead doodle Popeye all over my worksheets and count down the days to the next Sunday morning.



Speaking of school, the year Robert Altman's insanely off-kilter "Popeye" movie musical came out (way back in 1980), my young life changed almost for the worst. For some reason, that movie not only consumed my EVERY WAKING THOUGHT... but also FORCED me to mount a lip-synced version of Nilsson's "I Yam What I Yam" (that Robin Williams sings) for the Fullbright Elementary School talent show. I called upon the talents of my little Korean friend David and my little African-American friend Reuben. They played the goons who get beat up and I, of course, played Popeye.

Because we WERE so poor, my mom would have to get sufficiently improvise with my Sailor Man costume. I wore an old pair of over-sized, brown work boots that belonged to some random adult I don't recall, white jeans, a blue and red terrycloth t-shirt, a doo-rag around my neck, and a Greek sailor's cap I insisted my mom buy me. Mom was also WAY into wicker back then so she gave me this wicker scoop she used to hang on the wall that served as my pipe, and drew fake anchor tattoos on my forearm with a black eye-liner pencil. For a shitty-ass, makeshift, Welfare-ian Popeye get-up, it was pretty damn convincing.

I won first place in the talent show. My luck was changing. I was heralded among my peers as "The Popeye Kid". All the girls wanted ME to be their partner during square dance class and all the dudes actually feared I just might kick their asses if they chose to wrong me.

In fact, the performance was SUCH a hit with the school that I was invited (sans David and Reuben, success evidently eluding them) to perform the lip-sync skit at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills before their evening's screening of "Popeye". One hundred once-famous geriatrics (half of them in wheelchairs) cheered me on and made me feel that a star was born. It was one of the best memories I have of performing for others. Mom was so proud of me and still talks about that fateful night to this day.

Of course all good things come to an end. First off, I begged my mother to buy me a can of spinach just like Popeye eats. She did, knowing better, and I wound up barfing my brains out, post-consumption. "Blecch! What's Popeye THINKING?!", I'd urp with tears in my eyes. Secondly, I fell in love seriously (for the first time ever) with this girl, Raina Warwick. Capitalizing on my first-place win, I managed to wrangle Raina to play Olive Oyl to my Popeye for ANOTHER lip-sync skit I wanted to do somewhere down the line to the tune of "Sail With Me", another song from the movie. Raina was only interested in being friends, so, suffice it to say, my attempts to woo her at rehearsals failed miserably. I don't even think the performance ever saw the light of day. So long, Olive.

Later, John Huston's "Annie" came out and I thought I'd have my "Popeye" replacement. Unfortunately, as much as I loved it, and even bought the soundtrack, it was a POOR supplement for the one-eyed sailor. Not to mention, REALLY gay. "Annie" was MUCH more for girls. I couldn't go around in an Annie wig fake-singing about how it's a hard knock life. Although I did later wind up dating one of the orphans from that film.

Girls. That was the rub, bub. I mean, Raina aside, I was GROWING UP and getting more and more into girls. It was all-too-apparent that Popeye impersonations were NOT gonna be the correct aphrodisiac. Couple that with the fact that I was now watching episodes of "Three's Company" and discovering my penis. Popeye the Sailor was soon swept away to distant sea by the tsunami of horniness that was going on in my OshKosh B'Goshes. Jack Tripper was my new hero now. I traded in my little sailor outfit for corduroy jeans, matching vest, western shirt, feathered hair, and endless fruitful encounters with girls. Popeye would HAVE to understand.

CUT TO:

Today. 27 years later. Warner Brothers Video, by arrangement with King Features Syndicate, has issued the first 60 ORIGINAL Fleischer Studios Popeye cartoons on DVD. Some of the most miraculous, bizarre, opium-enhanced, violent, and character-driven works of animation art I've ever seen in my life. My wife's enjoying them, too! I'm watching them and studying them... and learning from them. And I am DETERMINED to learn Flash so that I can finally (finally) begin to bring my own stupid designs to vibrant, twisted life. I will.



So why Popeye? WHY?

Because he was ugly. Because he was unintelligible. Because he smoked and cursed and cracked skulls with the worst of 'em. Because he only had one eyeball. Because he was imperfect. Because the world he lived in was ripe with seaside strangeness, and he fit right in almost TOO snugly. Because he had an impeccable moral code. Because he didn't take shit from anyone, ESPECIALLY Bluto/Brutus. Because he loved a chick as awkward and goofy and unsightly as Olive Oyl...

Because he was what he was.